XEEN

Zhina Ardalan, also known as xeen, is an Iranian-born electronic musician and sound artist based in Paris. Her music blends distorted vocals, dense textures, and broken rhythms, shaped by emotion, tension, and a deep sense of instinct. Drawing from both personal experience and a long history of underground music-making, her sound lives somewhere between vulnerability and defiance.

Zhina’s artistic journey began with a background in visual communication, which continues to influence the way she thinks about form, space, and storytelling. Alongside music, she has a lasting passion for photography, often using the medium as a way to explore atmosphere, isolation, and the unseen. Her visual and sonic practices frequently overlap, feeding into one another through experimentation and mood.

She first came into the public eye as the vocalist and rhythm guitarist of The Finches, an all-female underground indie rock band formed in Tehran in 2015. In a country where women weren’t allowed to perform publicly, the band still managed to release two EPs and play numerous underground shows, despite constant surveillance and government pressure. Over time, the band’s sound grew darker and more personal, shaped by both lived experience and creative resilience.

Zhina is also one half of Stereotype, a collaborative duo with Meshcut. The two met in Tehran’s underground scene and began making music during the pandemic. Their current work explores a mix of breakbeats, synths, and shifting emotional landscapes.